CHAPTER 6
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Meet the Timeline
Ready to put your designs into motion? In this chapter, you'll learn about the basics of LiveMotion's Timeline-based animation functions. The Timeline provides a treasure chest of animation features. Unlock its mysteries and you'll gain access to a world of possibilities. Make no bones about it; the Timeline is mysterious to the uninitiated. The more familiar it becomes, however, the bet-ter you'll fare as a budding animator. And if you're already familiar with LiveMotion's big brother, AfterEffects, you have a big leg up-the LiveMotion Timeline is largely inspired by the AfterEffects Timeline.

LiveMotion delivers keyframe-based animation on an object attribute basis, allowing each attribute of an object to be animated over time. This allows for the highest levels of control. The occurrence of each attribute change (the keyframe) is shown in the Timeline, whereas the specific change to the attribute is shown in the pertinent palette. When you see a diamond appear in one of the attribute timelines of an object, you'll know that something has changed. You'll have to look at the pertinent palette to see exactly what has changed.

Subsequent chapters focus largely on the creation of Flash (SWF) files. This chapter starts with the simple stuff-things that relate to animation in any format-before it covers the topics of animated GIFs and nested animation.

The Timeline Interface
Let's take a close look at the Timeline in order to put a name to each piece of its user interface. Figure 6.1 provides an annotated view of the Timeline of an empty composition. At the top left, you'll see the current time and VCR controls, followed by the Composition/Object menu. The Behaviors timeline sits between the Composition and Object listing. (Click on the Edit Behaviors button to add a timeline behavior with the Edit Behaviors dialog box.)

Moving to the bottom of the Timeline window, you'll find the Loop and Life-time buttons at the bottom left side. When the Loop button is depressed, the animation of the selected Timeline Independent Group(s) or composition will loop continuously (click the Loop button again to turn off looping). Clicking the Lifetime button will extend an object lifetime to the full composition length (click the Lifetime button again to retract the object lifetime).

At the bottom center of the Timeline window, the Time Zoom controls provide the ability to display more (or less) of the animation's frames in the Timeline window. Push the Time Zoom slider all the way to the left, and the Timeline will display only seconds. Push the Time Zoom slider to the right, and it will display both seconds and frames. (You can also use the Time Zoom Up and Down buttons on either side of the slider.)

Navigation through time and elements is straightforward. The horizontal and vertical scrollbars allow you to scroll through a composition's duration and

Fig. 6.1 An empty Timeline with the composition selected

objects, respectively. The widget that slides along the top of the Timeline is known as the Current Time Marker (CTM). The vertical red line that extends downward from the CTM allows you to pinpoint the time for each attribute.

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